


Sonas/ Happiness

by RedStarFiction



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-11-12 11:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedStarFiction/pseuds/RedStarFiction
Summary: From @YesFanGirl on Tumblr:Hi Han! Since Voyager is just around the corner could you give us a glimpse of Jamie’s POV when he returned with Claire to Lallybroch and the intimate conversations of him and older Ian and Jenny. Showing Jamie’s utter bliss having Claire back and the concerns Jenny has?? Thanks so much!!I loved this prompt and I’ve run with it into a slight AU territory because as I wrote this I felt that so much of the heartache which occurred in Voyager could have been avoided with more honesty between the characters here. Much love, Han xx





	1. Chapter 1

“I canna believe it, ken?”

“Aye, it was no doubt a shock for Jamie too.”

“After all this time though? What do ye think she wants?”

“I imagine she wants to live out her days with her husband.”

Jenny felt Ian shrug his shoulder beneath her head and frowned in the darkness

“Do ye really think after near twenty years she’d come back just for that?”

“Och! A marriage is no’ a small thing Janet! The lass thought him dead!”

“So she says!”

Jenny sniffed. Ian kissed her head gently and wrapped his arm more securely around her, squeezing her against his side.

“Well she’s still hear after the chaos of Edinburgh.”

“Chaos that could have been avoided had she no’ just shown up.”

“It wasna Claire that set the fire. That was your son.”

“Mmmpphmm.”

Jenny grunted and Ian felt the curve of her cheek rise against his chest in a small smile.

“Why is it when they do something reckless they’re my bairns?”

“Because it is the Fraser in them that drives them to it.”

Ian smiled, the little exchange a familiar pattern between them for the past twenty-five years since wee Jamie streaked naked into the parlour at two years old and proceeded to regale Ian and his guests with a very energetic dance before Jenny caught up to him and was able to carry him out again.

“I ken ye love Jamie dearly, I do too, but he has lived a verra unconventional life. It’s no’ surprising that Claire couldna find word o’ him. He’s spent most o’ his life an outlaw of one kind or another, he’s never settled …”

“Aye, it didna help that he marrit an uncanny Sassenach shrew…”

Ian clucked his tongue against his teeth impatiently

“Well I hardly marrit a timid mouse, did I?”

“Ian!”

“He loves her, Janet. It is as simple as that. He loves her as deeply as I love you and let me tell ye, that is no shallow depth.”

Ian heard a heavy exhalation of breath and grinned to himself, picturing the pinch of his wife’s nostrils and the narrowing of her beautiful bright blue eyes as she decided whether to be mollified or not.

“What about Laoghaire?”

Jenny whispered finally

“Mmmphmm. Weel that is another matter.”

Ian admitted and sighed

“Let them be for a while before ye bring it up, Jen. It’s been twenty years, they deserve a few days of peace at least.”

Jenny pursed her lips but was spared from answering by the sudden growl of Ian’s belly.

“Are ye hungry, ghraidh?”

“Aye, a wee bit. I could scarcely eat at dinner.”

“I’ll get ye something.”

Jenny patted his chest and sat up, reaching for her robe.

“Thank ye.”

Ian rolled over and caught her hand, drawing to his lips and lightly kissing the delicate knuckles before rolling onto his back and sighing contentedly.

*

Jenny could hear someone in the pantry and closed her eyes, praying it wouldn’t be Claire. She didn’t wish to bump into her errant sister in-law, especially not in the quiet, dead of night when any chance meeting is shrouded in a delicate sort of intimacy, but it was Jenny’s home and Jenny’s food and she was damned if she would hide on the stairs like a child up past bedtime waiting for Claire to finish her rummaging.

Lifting her chin defiantly, Jenny continued down the stairs. As she got closer she could hear a low, tuneless humming and the tension left her shoulders; it was Jamie.

*

Jamie seldom hummed, it was a sort of odd vibration in his throat that came with intense happiness and was not something he was particularly aware of doing. All the same, he fell silent at the sound of padding footsteps approaching and turned to the door, expecting Claire to come in. It was so strange but in the few days since she had been back, Jamie realised he had already come to expect her presence. He had woken in the night unsurprised to find her beside him and when she ran her hands through his hair as he sat at the table that evening, her touch didn’t surprise him. When their eyes met during conversation it did not feel unusual. It felt natural.

For twenty years he had lived with the ache of her absence and yet he had adjusted to her presence with such ease, like a flower struggling to survive in the shade, suddenly exposed to the brilliance of a sunny day; he absorbed the rich joy of her being there without hesitation or trepidation.

“Built an appetite as well did ye, Sass … oh!”

He broke off, blushing slightly as Jenny stepped into the pantry beside him

“I thought ye were Claire.”

“Och! I daresay she’ll sleep until noon, the journey she must have had.”

Jamie cocked an eyebrow at his sister but Jenny was keeping her eyes resolutely on the bread knife she had picked up and the loaf she was selecting.

“Claire’s always been a fairly early riser.”

He said evenly, watching Jenny carefully.

“Has she? Aye, well I wouldna ken.”

Jenny’s face was carefully blank but her tone was clear enough and Jamie’s blush deepened, though not with embarrassment

“Have ye a thing to say, Janet?”

“More than one, James, but it can keep.”

Jenny retorted and Jamie closed his eyes striving for patience. It was a shock after all, Claire returning after so long and he reasoned that Jenny might feel a little put out, even with prior warning from Ian.

“Do bheachd cudromach gu mor rium, piuthar.”*

Jamie said softly, the language of their childhood easy on his tongue.

“Agus agaibh sonas cuisean gu mor rium, brathair.”**

Jenny replied, as she finished buttering the bread and turned to look up at him

“but ye ken happiness can no’ be a straight forward thing here. Does Claire know about …”

“Seas!”

Jamie jerked forward reflexively, his fingers nearly covering Jenny’s lips but not quite touching her, his eyes wide with panic.

“Don’t speak that name here.”

He whispered, almost pleading.

“Ye canna ignore it, Jamie.”

“I know but …”

Jamie broke off suddenly, stepping back and hastily closing the door, shutting them into the tight space of the pantry.

“I canna tell her yet, she’s been through so much to get back to me…”

“Even more reason why ye owe her the truth then. If she loves ye, she will understand.”

Jamie snorted and shook his head

“Would ye understand such a thing?”

“After twenty years and no word? Aye, I would! What would she have had ye do?”

Jenny snapped, though she kept her voice to a low whisper.

“None of this is Claire’s fault, Jenny. She left because I made her go. I meant to die at Culloden.”

Jamie spread his hands helplessly a gesture of the angry futility of man against the twists and turns of life.

“If ye dinna tell Claire, I will. Or I will send for your other wife to come and deal with this.”

Jenny said, watching her brother with a hard gaze that he recognised as that of their father, strong and certain in her conviction and he knew that his temper would not sway her.

“If ye wish me to beg ye, I will. I have no right to your silence but I will ask it of ye anyway. Just give me a day to find a way to tell Claire the truth and I will do it. She deserves to hear it from me directly and make her decision accordingly.”

“So ye think she’ll leave ye when she finds out?”

Jenny demanded and Jamie shrugged but the strain of his fear was evident in his face.

“I dinna ken, but coward that I am, I canna bear to find out yet, no’ just yet. Please Jenny, do not say anything.”

Harsh times had placed many strains on the siblings relationship but as they stood in the little candlelit pantry, the years fell away and all the distances and barriers slipped to nothingness leaving only the core of their shared love and family ties behind. Sighing Jenny bit her lip and lifted a hand to cup her brother’s cheek.

“I can remember a time that I had to stoop to touch ye so.”

She smiled gently, tracing her thumb over the high arc of his cheekbones

“Ye deserve happiness Jamie, stability and a good home. Ye can have that here, ken? But with Claire …”

“Claire is my home, Jenny. She always has been.”

Jamie interrupted, taking her hand and holding it lightly in his own. Jenny opened her mouth to say more but closed it again. She knew that what he said was true, that in all the years since Culloden her brother had been living a rootless, joyless existence as his soul pined for it’s twin. She had thought … had hoped … that Laoghaire might plug the hole left in him by Claire’s loss but if anything, the marriage had only chafed at Jamie’s grief. And now Claire was back and Jamie had everything he had ever wanted. Could she really begrudge him that?

 

Finally she sighed and nodded.

“Aye. I ken she is. But for all she is your home, you are a verra large part of mine and I ken that ye willna stay here in Scotland if Claire stays and I might never see ye again if ye leave.”

Jenny dabbed the sleeve of her robe beneath her eyes and sniffed

“I have nearly lost ye so many times, I dinna want to lose ye for good.”

“Ghraidh,”

Jamie murmured softly, enfolding his sister in his arms, bowing over until his cheek rested on the smooth black curls of her hair.

“Ye willna lose me, whether I live at Lallybroch or on the moon it doesna alter what is between us.”

“I ken … and I do want ye to be happy, truly.”

“I know that. I owe ye so much Jenny, ye have been as much a mother to me as ye have a sister and I dinna think that I have ever properly thanked ye for it.”

“Ye dinna have to thank me!”

“Aye I do. Thank ye Janet, for everything.”

Jenny stepped back and took a deep steadying breath.

“Well you’re welcome. I won’t send word to Laoghaire, but she’ll find out soon enough and ye’d do better to have told Claire the truth before she comes knocking.”

“Aye.”

Jamie nodded. They stood in silence for a few moments, each of them lost to their own thoughts. The old house was still and quiet around them, the silent echo of the years reverberating in the shadows and nooks, lifetimes of secrets and shared moments kept safe within its stone walls.

“Are ye happy, brathair?”

“More than I ever thought to be again. My heart feels swelled to bursting and sometimes I look at her, and I feel that I canna breathe for joy.”

Jamie smiled almost shyly and Jenny breathed a small sigh of either relief or resignation, Jamie couldn’t tell.

“and Claire?”

“I hope so. I know I am not the same man that she wed, but God willing she might have found something to love about the man I am now.”

He shrugged and Jenny nodded in understanding

“She has, mo luaidh. I dinna doubt it.”

Tiptoeing she kissed Jamie’s cheek and picked up Ian’s snack

“Good night Jamie.”

“Good night Jenny.”


	2. The Very Bones Of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation of Sonas/Happiness which was supposed to be a one shot but it had a fantastic reaction and actually this instalment will lead directly to another prompt I have received (watch this space!) So please enjoy my own version of events for early Voyager times - *spoilers for fans of the show only* H xxx P.S this is the first time I have ever written in Claire’s voice so please do bear with me if it feels a little off - I’m working it out :-)

I remembered a time in which the cold did not seep so easily into my bones, a time when my calves did not ache with the ascension of a single slope. I looked down at the grassy bank, just visible beneath the clutch of fabric in my hands and frowned. The grass, if it could reasonably be called grass at the length it was, had made various little nicks and cuts across my knuckles and for a moment I considered shrugging out of the woollen dress and continuing upwards in just my shift and stockings and bitter March wind be damned.

“Alright, Sassenach?”

I looked up, still grinning fiendishly at the thought of leaving the heavy garment to the elements and saw Jamie smiling back at me with a mix of amusement and pity. Clearly my laboured breathing had been more pronounced than I realised and I forced my trembling legs back into motion, lunging up the hill with a renewed determination.

“Of course, just … enjoying the view.”

The cheeriness of my tone and the vacant wave across the expanse of valley below us did nothing but cause Jamie to raise one arched red brow in my direction and hold out his hand.

“Let me help ye, lass.”

“Unless you mean to carry me …”

“I probably could. Ye’re a wee wisp of a thing! Did they no’ have proper food in Boston?”

Jamie caught my elbow as I huffed past him and helped me over a sudden rocky patch of earth, his own feet sure and steady on the uneven ground.

“Ha! Flatterer! They had plenty of food and I assure you, I ate plenty of it!”

I immediately regretted trying a form a full sentence as the air left my lungs in a rush of words and seemed to remain empty whilst I gasped, sweat prickling beneath my hair.

“Ach. Weel if ye did, I ken where it’s all gone.”

Jamie grinned with an exaggerated glance at my posterior. I rolled my eyes but didn’t have the energy for further banter. We crested the top of the hill and I all but collapsed onto the nearest boulder, mopping my forehead with my already sweat soaked handkerchief and grimacing. Jamie had settled on the ground before me, like a little boy in class ready for story time from his favourite teacher but his face was carefully blank – like Brianna’s before confessing to some naughtiness when she was a little girl. 

“So, we are now safely in the middle of nowhere - what is it you have to tell me?”

The element of surprise most often worked with Bree and sure enough, colour touched Jamie’s cheekbones that could not be put down to the cold alone.

“As a matter of fact there is something, Sassenach. I should have told ye sooner but … well. I should have and I did not and ye may hold me accountable in whatever manner ye please but I would ask that ye let me finish the telling before ye have your say.”

His head had been bowed but he looked directly at me as he spoke, his eyes fixed on my own and I saw both fear and love, each battling to outdo the other and I noticed that his hands were shaking.

“Jamie, whatever it is … I’m here. We’re here. We can tackle it together.”

He made a sound half way between a laugh and a moan and stood up, his whole body seemed to vibrate with nervous tension and my own leg twitched beneath me in response.

“What is it then?”

“I … Claire, I …”

He came and stood before me, arms held rigidly at his side and his gaze burning through me, furious and wild, his emotions barely contained and for the first time, I was afraid.

“Jamie, please…”

He nodded once, then twice and finally took a breath that drew his shoulders upward before releasing it slowly through his nose. I felt almost ready to scream, panic rising in my chest with every heartbeat but forced myself to stillness, waiting for him to speak.

“I got re-married, Claire. A few years ago when I was released from my debt of servitude in England, when I came back to Lallybroch and Jenny couldna stand my listlessness anymore… it was arranged and I was wed to a widow … and …”

Jamie had started pacing, gesturing with his hands when the words stuck in his throat but I could barely hear what he was saying. The wind seemed to howl around me, through me, blocking my ears and wrenching moisture from my eyes that I did not want to feel against my cheek. Everything seemed to sharpen into focus. The way the grey light of the sky above accentuated the deep bronze threads of his hair and muted the gold. How his shirt pulled against the powerful swell of his shoulders and his lips, slightly chapped with the cold, formed the words he spoke with a delicate precision. The rough feel of his hands on my skin as he cupped my face between them and his eyes, those beautiful, slanted eyes that he had passed down to his daughter, our daughter. Brianna. Oh Bree! To have put her through all that I had only for it to come to this …

As swiftly as thick grey blankets of fog engulf unsuspecting moors in winter, misery covered me like a shroud and I found myself too numb even to weep for all that I had lost and all that I had given away.

“Please say something Claire. I ken ye must be…”

I pushed his hand away and drew upon what little courage I had left.

“We don’t need to talk about it Jamie. If you could ask Ian or one of the boys to see me back to Craigh na Dunn…”

“NO!”

The violence in his voice shook the layers of shock cocooning me from the full impact of his confession but it was his hands on my arms that penetrated it, the sudden heat of him, and the feel of his fingers biting into my flesh. I looked away and closed my eyes, unable to bear the sight of him. Mine and yet not mine at all.

“When we first wed, you were marrit and ye had to make a choice. There is no choice for me Claire, it is you. It has always been you.”

“Jamie, don’t …”

“Look at me.”

I kept my eyes shut and felt the air stir by my cheek a split second before the warmth of his palm settled there again, as gentle as a hummingbirds kiss.

“Look at me, damn ye Claire. See the truth of it for yourself and know what ye are to me, what ye have always been and will always be.”

“I can’t. If I look at you … if … I … I won’t be able to leave you.”

My voice cracked and broke over the words as Jamie lifted me to sitting.

“Please Claire.”

I swallowed and forced myself to look; I didn’t want to but something deeper than want compelled me to it and I moved on instinct for it was all I had the strength to do.

He looked tired and afraid and in the moment before I blinked, I saw his twenty-six year old self, sending me away to protect our un-born child, the same haunted lines of misery in the corner of his mouth. Yes there was love, as there had always been love. But I had been a fool to think it was enough to overcome all other disruptions of life for twenty years. I had been a fool to come back and expect it to all be the same.

“I should not have disrupted your life like this. I had no idea you had … I found no mention of a … a second wife in the history books … but I am glad you know of Brianna. You deserved to know about her.”

My voice shook again but held firm and did not break. 

“I am glad ye came back.”

“You shouldn’t be!”

I shook my head and slapped my hand against the earth in frustration.

“Jamie, you are married!”

“Aye! To you!”

“No … I mean… yes but …”

“You are my first wife Claire, the only woman I have ever truly loved and you think I would cast ye aside for a sham marriage that Jenny concocted? Christ!”

“It’s not about casting me aside! It’s about what is right!”

“THIS IS RIGHT!”

Jamie roared, his face flaming as the fire of his temper lit and caught

“You are my heart Claire! I love the verra bones of ye! Do ye ken what it has been like to live without ye?”

“Of course I fucking know! I’ve done the same as you and more! I raised your child!”

We were nose to nose, our voices raised and echoing off of the ancient stone around us, twenty years of hurt compressed into the clipped sentences we could manage to form coherently.

“Then dinna speak of leaving for I canna bear it!”

“You think I can? What would you have me do?!”

“STAY WITH ME!”

I could not say which of us started it, perhaps it was him, perhaps it was me, but we came together with the fierce and desperate longing that I had remembered from our parting twenty years before. It was not the cautious love-making of Edinburgh, nor the joyous coupling of our days since. We were fighting with the need to consume each other, the metallic taste of blood between our lips and teeth marks blooming from stark white to heavy bruised purple on collar bones. The slap of hands against taught flesh and muscles quivering with the assault of our combined efforts.

The salt of his tears stung the abrasions his teeth had left on my breast as I clutched him to me at the last, the colours of him exploding behind my eyes as my voice rose toward the grey sky above, the noise entwined with his own cry.

“Thoir maitheanas dhomh. Thoir maitheanas dhomh, mo Gradhe.”

 

Jamie’s voice was hoarse, his cheek pressed into the damp earth beside my ear. My fingers stroked the thick tresses of his hair almost without my bidding. The weight of his body pressed me into the earth, our joining an anchor for us both. I clenched my muscles and felt him move, an answering touch at the very core of my being.

“There is nothing to forgive, Jamie.”

“Whatever there was between us is there still Claire, do ye no’ feel it?”

I nodded. Whatever else was true, it was between us still, the force which had been powerful enough to survive war and starvation, even lift the veil of time itself. I love the verra bones of ye he had said and I knew it to be the absolute truth for us both for even separated by two hundred years when all that had remained of him was bones, my heart had pined for its mate and here in his arms was where I felt the most alive I ever had.

Turning my head to face him, I realised that the decision was not mine to make. To say good bye or to move forward was not a choice I had; for I had placed my bets and allowed the chips to fall as they may and I had won more than I had any right to dare hope for. Jamie was alive, I had found him, and we loved one another still. Now I needed only to gather my winnings and carry on.

“What do we do now?”


	3. Woman's World.

“He’s told ye?”

“Yes.”

Jenny’s grip on Claire’s arms relaxed but she didn’t let go.

“And? … You’ll be stayin’?”

Beside her, Jamie twitched and the hand he had placed on her back flexed ever so slightly but Claire’s attention was fixed on Jenny.

“I will.”

She didn’t preface her statement with ‘of course’, neither woman had need of gushing assurances.

“Good.”

Jenny nodded and turned to Jamie

“You’ll need a lawyer.”

“Aye. No doubt Laoghaire will have her brother out here presently once news spreads.”

Jamie shrugged. Claire gently disentangled herself from both Fraser’s hands and stepped around them. She felt strange, a restless sort of anxiety that was no doubt in part due to the shock of Jamie’s confession and perhaps a little of the need to act, to do something other than wait for lawyers.

Claire closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose, closing out the babble of Jamie and Jenny discussing which man they should hire.

Men. It always came down to men! If one man messed something up, he paid another to fix it. Claire felt a sudden surge of anger and turned sharply to face her husband.

“She deserves to hear it from you, Jamie.”

“Laoghaire?”

Jamie frowned. On the walk back to Lallybroch he had talked incessantly, filling the periods of silence between them with high-paced retelling of events to give Claire as much of the truth as she had a desire to hear. She had made a sharp wee noise when he explained who he was wed to and he had sworn that he meant never to set eyes on Laoghaire Mackenzie again if it pleased Claire for it to be so and she had made no rebuttal so he assumed that she would prefer it that way.

“If it were me, I would want to hear it from you.”

“Ye may be right, Sassenach, but I dinna mean to be putting her feelings above your own.”

Claire waved an impatient hand before her face, brushing his words aside.

“My feeling is to get this over and done with as quickly as possible.”

Jamie pursed his lips but nodded.

“I’ll have Janet fetch her.”

Jenny said quietly and left them alone. The silence of the room felt more than a little oppressive and Claire crossed to a window, folding her arms across her chest before letting them fall to her sides and finally placing her hands on the sill.

“Ye look ready to hit something, Sassenach.”

“I feel it too. I’m not angry with you, Jamie…”

“Aye ye are.”

Jamie smiled ruefully, leaning against the wall beside her, looking down fondly.

“Ye most likely wish to skelp my arse or stab me or both and then leave me for the crows and I daresay I would deserve it.”

Claire snorted and looked up at him from beneath the sweep of her lashes

“You wouldn’t deserve it … not the last two things at least, but seeing as Ian did a fairly good job of the first one a few days ago, I’ll make do with the memory.”

The warm rumble of his laugh as Jamie wrapped his arms about her and drew himself against the proud line of her back, made Claire’s own lips twitch but she wasn’t ready to laugh, not quite yet – there were matters still to settle.

“I want to be there when you tell her.”

“Why? I ken ye have a right to be angry, Sassenach but I didna think ye’d be cruel to Laoghaire o’er it.”

“I’m not being cruel. I don’t want to gloat nor dredge up the past but she needs to see it for herself, you and I together.”

“I dinna think …”

“Jamie, I wasn’t asking you.”

“I dinna care for being bossed, Sassenach.”

“Agree swiftly then!”

Claire heard his breath hitch with either annoyance or amusement, she couldn’t be sure but eventually he sighed and nodded against her hair.

“Fine, but I want it noted that I dinna think it wise.”

“Noted.”

*

Claire’s first feeling upon seeing Laoghaire as she entered the doorway of Lallybroch, was that of relief. Relief that despite being notably younger than Claire, Laoghaire looked older. She was slightly over-weight, her blonde hair mostly stuffed beneath a cap but the stands that escaped hung limp and dark with grease. She had pinched her cheeks to try and bring about a youthful glow but the result was a focussed ruddiness that made it look as though she had taken too much wine with dinner.

Her eyes settled on Claire and both women lifted their chins defiantly.

“Laoghaire, thank ye for coming.”

Jamie bowed slightly and Laoghaire snorted her derision, ignoring him and focussing her gaze on Jenny instead.

“So, it’s true Jenny. Your girl told me that Jamie’s witch had returned and that ye foolishly let her across the threshold of your home.”

Laoghaire spoke with a forced attempt at authority and Claire saw Ian’s lip tremble with the effort of holding neutral composure. Claire felt a little of the tension leave her shoulders at the sight of it, for if Ian wanted to laugh at the thought of Laoghaire admonishing Jenny, then the two women were not close friends and it was possible that Claire had a true ally in her sister-in-law.

“Claire returned from France after recently learning Jamie had survived Culloden, Laoghaire. There is no need for unpleasantness.”

Jenny spoke mildly enough but her tone held steel and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who would come away the victor should it come to a battle of wills between them.

“Your brother has been bewitched a second time – unpleasantness has already occurred and under this very roof!”

Drawing herself up to her full height, Claire stepped forward, her hand extended

“Hello Lao…”

“Dinna speak my name she-devil!”

Laoghaire spat, levelling the sign of the horns at Claire, nostrils flaring.

“Dinna dare to speak to me! I have anointed all my body wi’ Holy Water and ye will no’ find purchase for your evil in any crook nor crevice!”

With that she flounced past Claire into the drawing room, leaving the residents of Lallybroch staring after her, except for Ian who had to remove himself immediately, suddenly overcome with a terribly unconvincing coughing fit.

“Ye’ll mind I did note it not to be the best idea.”

Jamie murmured lowly, his hand slipping over Claire’s own, squeezing her fingers lightly/

“Well we’re bloody in it now! Come on…”

Claire said firmly and followed boldly in Laoghaire’s wake, pulling Jamie into the fray with her.


	4. Realising Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuing on from womans-world I didn’t want to write a huge chapter about Claire and Laoghaire fighting it out because I don’t think it is a fight to be had, Claire has already won just because Jamie loves her, but based on a prompt I received here is a moment that I felt Voyager was missing - Laoghaire realising a little of what lies between our dear J+C. Thank you for reading, H xx

Laoghaire exhaled heavily through her nose and eyed Claire warily. Both women had sat quietly as Jamie explained the situation to Laoghaire. She had blinked away tears and flushed with anger in turn but at his urging had remained silent.

Claire for her part had maintained a firm grip on Jamie’s thigh beneath the table, a small token of her claim on him that she told herself was ridiculous, but kept all the same.

“Jamie, if ye wish to be rid o’ the Sassenach, I will support ye wi’ a divorce petition and …”

“No, Laoghaire, I thought Claire dead and would never have remarried had I ken the truth. It is to her that I was wed first and with her I wish to remain.”

Jamie had said the same thing in different ways more times than he could count and his patience was slipping.

“But ye love me, do ye not?”

“I …”

Torn between shame, guilt and frustration, Jamie hesitated and felt both women’s gaze upon him, Laoghaire’s blue eyes as damp and hopeful as summer rain, Claire’s a blazing inferno burning into him, a look that warned him to keep his silence at his peril.

Jamie squeezed her fingers gratefully beneath the table. His wife, his Sorcha, had never let him be a coward. She understood and respected the parts of him that Laoghaire either did not know were there or could not comprehend and so chose to ignore.

“No, I dinna love ye. I’m sorry Laoghaire, truly. The hurt ye must feel rests at my feet and I will see that you and your girls are seen right.”

When delivering bad news after a surgery, Claire had the often seen the fight go out of a person. Always after a long struggle and always when the latest verdict was final. She saw it happen again now as Laoghaire’s shoulders rounded and the tight lines around her mouth relaxed. Her worst fears had been confirmed and she could no longer fool herself.

“The money is a help but it isna a protection the likes of having a man…”

She shook her head slowly and looked very, very tired.

“All these years of loving ye, wantin’ ye and for this … I dinna ken why God would wish this upon me. The humiliation of it…”

She seemed to be talking to herself; her hands, rough and red from years of hard work, resting on the table palm up and Claire was overcome with an urge to take hold the younger woman’s fingers in her own. She realised that in her own poor and misguided way, Laoghaire had loved Jamie. Perhaps not the man he was but the man she saw in him and the realisation allowed compassion to overcome Claire’s jealousy and anger.

“You are not humiliated Laoghaire.”

Claire said softly and felt Jamie jerk beside her in surprise

“I am sorry that you are hurt, but you pursued something that not meant to be. You and I know the truth of how far you were willing to go to try and get it. Perhaps this is a chance to start again… to find something real.”

Laoghaire snorted and glared at Claire with sudden venom

“Do not dare to pity me, bitch. Aye, I did ye wrong once when I was a girl and ye have come back to pay me in kind all these years later, speak it plain and be done with it.”

“I haven’t come back to do anything to you! My God! Your arrogance!”

Anger bloomed in Claire’s chest afresh and she held Laoghaire’s gaze unwaveringly

“Arrogance? Ha! Ye sit there claiming a man ye long since abandoned, stealin’ him away from his bairns and yet ye speak to me of arrogance!”

“Jamie has just one daughter. My daughter. Do not throw your children before you as a shield for your own petty desires.”

“Speak of my children again and I’ll rip the throat from ye! I see no bairn at your side, most like as it is waitin’ for ye to return to it in the fires of Hell…”

Laoghaire screamed and stood with surprising speed.

“Do you mean to let her speak of Brianna that way?”

Claire demanded turning to fix Jamie with that same withering look. Jamie opened his mouth to speak but with a noise of disgust, Claire was on her feet and heading toward Laoghaire.

“Claire! Stop it!”

Jamie caught his wife’s arm and pulled her back, the arc of her outstretched palm sailing past Laoghaire’s face, close enough to lift the hair from her neck.

“Enough! Both of ye need to calm down! This is not … Oof!”

The breath left him as Claire’s elbow found his gut but Jamie refused to relinquish his hold and half dragged, half carried her toward the door.

Laoghaire made as if to come after them, straightening her cap

“Dinna move another step!”

Jamie glowered at her and Laoghaire wilted beneath his gaze, sitting down obediently. Claire bit his wrist sharply and Jamie cursed, bundling them both from the room.

“Let me GO!”

“No! I have lost ye once and I’ll no’ lose ye again under the charge of murder.”

Jamie grunted, kicking the door closed behind them and placing himself bodily in front of it, releasing Claire and inspecting his arm, grinning.

“I think ye damn near broke the skin, Sassenach.”

“I meant to break the bone, you smug bastard!”

Claire snapped, swiping the hair back from her face.

“How could you let her speak like that? How could you let her think you LOVED her?”

“It was in the vows – love, honour … ye ken them, aye?”

His grin was gone but to Claire’s absolute fury he still sounded almost amused

“Oh and so you had no choice then?”

She demanded

“Should I have replaced the words with a diatribe of vicious ill wishes?”

Jamie’s eyes had narrowed and Claire could see that he was now close to losing his own temper and she didn’t care.

“YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE FUCKING MADE THEM!”

She screamed, the words ripping from her throat with a guttural rawness. She seldom shouted, unlike Jamie her anger was usually colder but she felt the heat of it now, burning her from the inside out.

“You are mine, do you hear me?”

“Aye Sass…”

“And Brianna is your child! Not those girls! BRIANNA!”

“Clair…”

“Do you hear me? I have not been through EVERYTHING it took for me to get here for you to sit, cowed in silence before that woman…”

“I wasna ‘cowed’!”

Jamie snapped, catching Claire’s wrist as she pointed an accusatory finger at his chest

“Get your bloody hands OFF ME! I will not be intimidated by you or her or anyone else!”

“Aye! Ye make that plain! Screaming the house down like a banshee! Do ye hear yourself, woman?”

“Oh! How awful of me! Of course a woman should be silent and meek in your presence! The great James FUCKING FRASER!”

“Careful Sassenach, I ken ye are angry and I am tryin’ to respect that but my patience has its limits…”

“HA! Don’t I know it!”

On the other side of the door, Laoghaire sat ramrod straight, eyes wide and mouth working silently in awe. She would never have spoken to Jamie the way that woman did. She simply would not have dared. It was not the way a wife spoke to her husband! A part of her saw it as further evidence that she was morally superior to the Sassenach but also …

To hear them rant at each other and be able to still hear the love that lay betwixt them reverberating over the raised voices and the curses was so strange and so beautiful that for a moment Laoghaire didn’t know what to make of it. She had led a life based on quick decisions and rash judgements that pride would not let her renege on but she began to suspect that she had been wrong about some things.

Wrong about Jamie loving the woman because she tricked him with her sweet musical voice and firm breasts. No such flimsy trick could stand up beneath the barrage of insults and squawking that was being thrown at him now.

Wrong about what made a man desire a woman because she could hear the wanting in his voice, Jamie’s beautiful, deep voice, raised in anger and frustration but filled with hunger for Claire despite it all.

Wrong about her own ability to drive the memory of his first wife away. Aye, she had so very clearly been wrong about that. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that what lay between the two warring people outside the door was a love like she had fantasised having her entire life, but she could admit that her place was not here.

Gathering herself, she marched forward and opened the door, swinging it hard enough to hit the wall and bounce back, slamming shut again, but not before she saw Jamie kissing Claire with the sort of fierce passion she had always imagined him capable of, but had never seen before.

It settled the matter. She seized the door and wrenched it open again, striding out, forcing her way bodily between them with a mighty push. For the first time raising her voice to Jamie Fraser she squared her shoulders and said

“Have each other then! But ye will pay my rent and my girls dowry and no’ argue it!”

Before storming out of Lallybroch for the last time.

Claire blinked as if waking and looked up at Jamie. With all the turmoil between them, she had rather forgotten that Laoghaire was still in the room.

“Oh.”

“Aye.”

Jamie puffed out his cheeks and shrugged

“No a verra dignified moment but it seems to have solved any lingering issue there.”

“Yes, yes it rather has.”

Claire wiped a hand across her lips and reached up to touch a graze at Jamie’s temple.

“We should probably try not to savage each other for a day or two …”

“I make no promises, Sassenach.”

Jamie smiled, placing a gentle kiss on the bridge of her nose

“Bed wi’ a vixen, ken?”


	5. The Future Stretches Before Us

After Laoghaire’s abrupt departure and the subsequent annulment of her marriage to Jamie, life at Lallybroch began to settle into something that resembled normality. Claire busied herself with cultivating a decent herb garden and tending to the tenants and villagers medical needs. Those who had known her before met her with incredulity that she had gone so untouched by the years and those who had heard tales of the Laird’s peculiar wife gaped at her with awe, but for the most part, they received Claire with the warm and ready hospitality that was synonymous with the Highland culture. It was; she realised, one of the few true characteristics of their culture that the English had not been able to strip away.

At first Jamie had been reluctant to leave her side for too long, he seemed to find and endless stream of excuses to return to the house throughout the day – forgotten tools or itchy shirts, a spilt canteen or water that needed refilling or a lost leather thong that left his long hair tumbling into his eyes as he worked.

It was after another bootlace managed to snap and he appeared at the kitchen, flushed with love rather than annoyance that should have accompanied such an inconvenience (especially as it was the fourth bootlace in as many days) that Jenny turned to him with hands on hips and said shrewdly

“If the missing of ye wife makes ye this clumsy Jamie, perhaps ye might consider taking her with ye or staying home!”

Jamie gave her a withering look but had no retort for his sister, which only compounded Jenny’s suspicions.

“Claire is in the garden and there is a spare pair of laces in Ian’s desk draw but they’re the last ones in the house so if ye need to come back this afternoon, spill ye canteen again. There is always water in the well, thank the Lord.”

Jenny grinned as she turned back to her laundry, ignoring her little brother’s haughty huff as he exited the kitchen, going toward the garden – not the laces!

*

Jamie rounded the corner of the house and his heart leapt into his throat, bringing him to a skidding halt. Claire was kneeling on the grass, not in her garden but just outside of it, her skirts tucked around her, bare feet visible as she leant forward to tackle another weed.

She was wearing a pair of Ian’s shearing gloves and attacking the shoots of dandelions and thistle with a wee knife and the sort of frown she normally saved for his more self-inflicted injuries as she patched him up.

“Come ON you utter bastard!”

Her voice drifted over to him and Jamie smiled to himself. His foul-mouthed wee Sassenach! He had missed Claire with such intensity during the course of his separation that at times he had seemed to forget the finer details of her, blinded by his grief. Now that she was back, he was re-discovering so much of her and each newly remembered thing filled his heart to bursting.

This was why he could not bear to be away from her for too long, not because he missed her touch or feared her absence, although of course he did, what drew him back to her with such need was the desire to know her completely again. To absorb, accept, and adore everything about his wife was to Jamie Fraser an almost religious quest. When they made love, before he lost himself to her, he tried to capture as much of her as he could. When she spoke, he gathered the nuances of her voice and hoarded them greedily, and although he would never begrudge her privacy, Jamie longed to see her when she was alone and just being her own true self.

He knew she did the same and was pleased by it, that she cared enough to know him so well after all this time gave his soul joy, but even if Claire had no more kindly feeling for him than she did for the weed she was dislodging, he would have wanted her just the same.

He was just about the announce himself when she straightened her back, removed the large gloves and pressed a hand to her belly, her fingers exploring the stretch of fabric a softer expression on her face.

Realisation dawned on Jamie and he swallowed heavily. He had noticed the absence of her monthly courses, but they were of an age now where perhaps nature had simply decreed it time and he had found no quarrel with it. But this … Ah diah! This!

He wondered when it might have happened. Of course there were any number of times but his mind kept returning with an unknowable certainty to the hill where he had confessed his second marriage, the clash of their bodies against the ancient earth and the way their cries had risen against the endless skies at the last. Aye, Jamie knew when.

“Mo duinne.”

He murmured and Claire turned to him, amber eyes large and welcoming his presence. She did not move her left hand, but extended her right to him, the silver of his ring glinting in the sunlight.

“I wondered when you would come. What broke this time?”

“A bootlace. Though I should ha’ realised the Fraser women are a canny bunch and spared the thing.”

Jamie smiled, settling cross-legged beside her on the grass. Claire grinned and gently tugged off his one loose boot, massaging her thumb over the ball of his foot.

“Mmmm. That is a rare treat, Sassenach.”

Jamie tipped his head back and let the sun warm his face as Claire’s fingers moved from his foot to his calf, caressing the springy red hairs that rose to meet her touch.

“Not too rare I hope.”

He could hear the tremor of nerves in her voice, a small glitch of uncertainty running through the rich timbre.

“Have ye a thing to tell me, lass?”

Jamie asked, looking directly at her. Claire pursed her lips and then relaxed with a small snort of amusement

“How long have you known this time?”

“About three minutes.”

Jamie shrugged apologetically

“I thought perhaps … I mean … we’re no spring chickens are we?”

“I know. It’s not … I mean … It’s a bit late if you’d rather not be a father again but I’d understand if you weren’t thrilled…”

“Claire,”

Jamie shook his head gently and drew her onto his lap, wrapping his arms carefully around her

“It is more than I ever dared hope for. A chance to be a father to one of our bairns. My God, Claire. Ye have given me so much already.”

He shivered against her and pressed a fierce kiss to her shoulder.

“Are ye sure about it?”

Claire nodded and smiled

“Fairly sure, it could be the stress of the last few months or any number of things but I think … well …”

“Say it, mo nighean donn, I would hear it from your lips if you dinna mind.”

“I think I’m pregnant Jamie.”

Another shiver ran through him, a small tremor that coursed up his spine and made his scalp tingle

“Mo Sorcha! Lord, but when I think ye canna give me any greater joy ye find a way to make my heart sing all the greater.”

He had seized her and kissed her passionately with Faith.

He had prised the truth from her ruthlessly with Brianna.

Now Jamie exerted no strength, nor power, he simply cradled Claire and their unborn child in his arms as gently as if they were fragile crystal in his hands and let the happiness settle around them.

“Do you think she would mind if she knew?”

Jamie asked suddenly and Claire, who had been lost in her own thoughts, jerked against him.

“Who? Laoghaire?”

Jamie clucked his tongue and shook his head

“No, of course not her. I meant Brianna. Do ye think she would mind?”

Claire bit her lip, she had considered this herself already and did not have a concrete answer

“I don’t think so.”

“I …”

Jamie cleared his throat and Claire looked up at him

“I want ye to ken that although I have no’ met Brianna, I will love them equally. I should never wish ye to think otherwise. I love her as I love Faith and I will love this bairn just as rightly.”

“I know that.”

Claire stoked his face and pressed a kiss to his cheek

“I love you James Fraser.”

“And I you, Sassenach. Verra much.”


	6. The Hill - Jamie's perspective

Jamie woke with the smell of heather still in nose and the sound of his wife’s pleasure echoing in his ears, the sound distant but distinct like listening to the ocean through a curved shell.

He was dimly aware of the quilt pressing uncomfortably against the insistent swell of his erection and moved his hips impatiently trying to free himself.

Beside him Claire snored gently and he stilled his hips, carefully reaching beneath the covers to lay his cock flat against his belly.

Jamie closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on sleep. It had been a long day and Claire had been ill for most of it, unable to keep down much beyond a dry bannock and water, the babe within seeming to repel all other food, Jamie didn’t want to wake her now.

As his body relaxed once again, his mind wandered unbidden to the hill. Since marrying Claire and losing his virginity nearly twenty-one years previously, Jamie had tried a great many sexual positions in a great many unusual places, and many of them he would not have previously thought possible, yet it was the afternoon on a wee hill in near Lallybroch that his mind kept returning to.

Perhaps it was not the coupling but the fear that had gone with it following his confession to Claire of his second marriage and her offer to leave him and return to her own time … Jamie shuddered and rolled over onto his side, pressing himself against his wife’s back, curling around her and inhaling her scent deeply.

Aye, maybe it was that which woke him in the night. He had lived so many years without fear, for what was there to fear when he had nothing left to lose? Of course he had feared for Jenny and the bairns after Culloden and then for William and the scandal Jamie’s presence might bring about for the lad, but they had been fears for others, not for himself. It was not until Claire returned and her kiss breathed life into him that Jamie had once again feared for himself, for he knew that if he were ever forced to live without her again, he would die and die longing.

But there was more than that – fear alone could not make him wake in the night with a raging cockstand and blood pounding through his veins like beasts in stampede!

Jamie traced the curve of Claire’s hip, his finger barely touching the fabric of her nightgown. The soft rhythm of her sleeping breath, almost like a child’s in it’s depth and sweetness, would bring tears to his eyes if he allowed it to. The way her hand rested on the pillow beside her face, fingers lightly curled, nails smooth and clean, the delicate bones of her wrist so small and fine and yet Jamie knew what those hands were capable of when woken.

They had the skill to heal with a blade, to draw seeds into herbs which cured sickness, they could pull a newborn child into the world and cradle it so tenderly, but they could also strike with a fierceness Jamie would not have believed had he not felt it himself and the hill had been no different.

Stay with me.

Those were the words he had thrown at her, his voice cracking under the desperate weight of them. Christ! The effort it had taken him not to kiss her, to try and force her to see the truth of his feelings and the depth of his love.

She had stared at him, her chest heaving and her face so lit with fury it could have blinded him. But she had stayed. Unblinking and immovable as the granite rocks around them, she had stayed and he had matched her stillness with his own, terrified to even breathe.

And then she had reached for him, her hands raising to wrap themselves in his hair, pulling him down to her, pressing her lips against his hard enough to bruise them both and he had met her in kind, his teeth scraping hers and his fingers tearing at the laces of her bodice. She had bitten him hard enough to draw blood and slapped his face before yanking his shirt over his head, her fingers going to the buckle of his belt whilst he tried to free his arms.

As she yanked it free Jamie wondered if she meant to strike him with it, to work the leather up and down his body until her arm grew tired and in his fear and fury and lust he had welcomed it, but she had thrown it aside.

Jamie snorted in the darkness, she had known even then that she needed no tool to punish him, nor any help in bringing him to heel.

He had born her back against the earth, lifting her skirts and dropping his breaks to his knees before climbing atop her. My God! How he had wanted to own her, to make her cry out his name and to know that she loved him still. He had sucked viciously at the tender skin of her throat, leaving angry purple marks and she had repaid him in kind, raking her nails from buttocks to his nape, making him gasp and whimper, before growling for more and pressing fierce kisses to her breasts, heedless of his stubble rasping against her swollen nipples, flicking over them with his tongue until she arched her back and finally, finally cried out his name, taking him over the edge with her.

He had wept at that, tears of relief and of shame and asked her forgiveness. She had soothed him tenderly, stroking his hair and the welts her teeth and nails had left on his neck and told him there was nothing to forgive.

Jamie remembered touching her throat feeling her pulse flutter beneath his finger-tips, feeling it slow from racing and resume it’s steady beat beneath the bloom of colour his ardour had left at the surface and asking her if she felt it between them still, the bond of love which had endured so very much.

Perhaps that was why he kept returning to that day, because it had confirmed so solidly that what had once been between them was there still. The ability to be overwhelmed but still survive it, to strengthen from it … the ability to love unconditionally without reservation or regret.

Everything he had known they had, everything he had felt for his Sassenach and believed she felt for him, confirmed in one gasped breath on a chilly hillside.

A moment that clarified the rest of his life’s devotion.

In all that he was and all that he would ever be, there was Claire and knowing it was like seeing all of mankind’s achievements and failures stretched out before him in a never ending line and knowing that he would not see them all, but that he had what truly mattered, all that had truly mattered, right here beside him.

Jamie kissed the soft cloud of his wife’s hair and closed his eyes, sighing contentedly.

What do we do now?

Claire had asked him as they lay entwined on the earth, and he had no clear answer for her then but he did now. Now they were to live as they had always meant to. Together.


	7. Welcome Home

Jamie had been in Edinburgh for nearly three weeks. Fergus was perfectly capable of arranging for the printing press to be placed into storage but Jamie was adamant that he needed to be there to see that ‘she’ was handled delicately.

Claire, now rather heavily pregnant, had decided to stay at Lallybroch rather than attempt the journey, much to Jamie’s evident relief.

“I’ll miss ye dreadfully Sassenach, but it willna take more than a month I shouldna think. Once she is safely stored I will ride like the Devil himself to get back to ye.”

He had promised and Claire had waved him off with a cheerful intonation not to get stabbed, arrested or shot on his travels.

“At least try not to!”

“I make no promises, but aye, I’ll try!”

Jamie had grinned, blowing her a kiss.

They had received no letters from either Jamie or Fergus over the weeks but whilst Claire longed to hear from her husband, she consoled herself that no news was most definitely good news!

Claire was in Jamie’s study reading one morning when she heard her name being called rather urgently from the hall and the sound of hurrying footsteps.

“Mrs Claire! Mrs Claire!”

She smiled and slowly, for there was no other way for her to do it, stood up. Rabbie McNab’s eldest boy, Ben, had been completely overwhelmed when informed that he could call Himself’s wife by her first name rather than ‘Mrs Fraser’ and though he had tried to accommodate her request, Mrs Claire was the closest he seemed able to get without blushing furiously.

“Ben! I’m in Jam … Himself’s study!”

She called.

“Mrs Claire there is a …”

“Ben, don’t shout through the door, come in!”

“Ah … Mrs Claire my boots my get mud on the carpet…”

Claire rolled her eyes and made her way toward the door herself. Though she reasoned that Ben had only been into the study once to the best of her knowledge, after him and another lad, whose name Claire could not remember had been caught raiding Jenny’s strawberry patch. She supposed that the experience had left him with a healthy dose of respect and caution regarding what might happen when summoned to the Lairds study.

Opening the door she looked down at his freckled face, eyes lit with excitement and smiled

“What is it, Ben?”

“I think Himself is home, Mrs Claire! My Da spotted a rider just like him in the distance and riding fast from the look of it.”

“Oh!”

Claire beamed and her hands flew to her hair, patting at the strands and curls that had escaped her pins that morning.

“Should I ask Mrs Murray to set out some breakfast?”

Ben asked, having delivered his message he was now clearly eager to be dashing off on the next errand.

“Yes, please do. And Ben, thank you for coming to find me so swiftly, you really are an excellent messenger.”

The boy’s cheeks flushed with praise and he bobbed his head shyly, mumbling a thank you before tearing off to the kitchen.

Claire hurried, as best she could, to her bedroom and hastily fixed her hair and pinched a little colour into her cheeks, it was daft she knew, but she wanted Jamie to come home to her in a suitable state, not looking frazzled and pale and as though she was about to burst out of her dress. The dress she could do little about, the babe was growing bigger by the day and Jenny had altered Claire’s dresses as much as she could without butchering them completely but the fabric still strained in places.

“You haven’t changed much in three weeks Beauchamp! Stop being ridiculous.”

Claire admonished herself and took a deep breath to steady her nerves.

It was the first little separation they’d had since her return. Three weeks wasn’t that long and Claire had certainly had enough to keep herself busy but she couldn’t deny that there had been a tight little knot of anxiety in her chest since Jamie had been gone and she would feel better once he was home. Claire needed to know that he would return, to know that he could return, and that they would not be lost to each other again.

She exhaled slowly and resolved not to throw herself at her husband too wildly the second his boots touched Lallybroch earth.

Claire made her way downstairs and stepped out into the courtyard. She could hear hoof beats and her heart hammered in rhythm. She smoothed the front of her dress and lifted her chin as the horse nosed around the bend in the road.

Sunlight glinted from auburn hair, sending shoots of ruby and copper dancing through the lengths which caught on the breeze. Slanted blue eyes, widened and a full lipped mouth curved into a delighted smile at the sight of Claire.

“MAMA!”

Brianna dismounted before the horse had fully stopped and staggered towards Claire, tears already streaming down her face.

“Bree? Oh my God! BREE!”

Claire lunged forward and grasped her daughter, pulling her close. They clung to each other, crying and laughing at once, their embrace as tight as it could be considering Claire’s belly between them. Finally, Claire thrust Brianna back to look at her properly.

“What are you doing here? Are you alright?”

“There was a fire … there will be a fire … in America …”

Bree shook her head to clear the jumble of thoughts and wiped her sleeve under her nose. Claire dashed her own sleeve across her cheeks and sniffed heavily.

“Mama, are you … you’re pregnant?”

Brianna’s eyes had widened further and Claire touched her swollen belly self-consciously.

“I am. It wasn’t planned. I mean, of course I’m happy but it … we …”

Claire closed her eyes and squeezed Brianna’s hand tightly in her own.

“Later. We can talk about this later, I want to hear about you.”

Brianna looked as if she would far rather hear about her mother’s pregnancy but obligingly filled Claire in on what she had found and what had prompted her to come through the stones. As she spoke, Claire watched her face and felt love envelope her heart so tightly she felt like she could hardly breathe.

She had always seen Bree’s similarity to her father, anyone could see it, but having Bree here … Claire swallowed heavily.

“So I guess at some point you and … ah … Jamie will move to America.”

Brianna spread her hands before her and shrugged.

“We haven’t got any plans to but …”

Claire waved the consideration away

“I am so, so glad you are here, baby. I have missed you so much.”

“I missed you too Mama. Is he here? Jamie?”

Claire’s hand flew to her mouth. She had been so caught up in her own joy of seeing Brianna she had not even thought about Jamie meeting his daughter.

“He’s in Edinburgh at the moment, actually someone thought you were him and told me he was home.”

“Oh.”

Claire couldn’t tell if Bree looked more relieved or disappointed.

“Meeting you will mean the world to him, Bree.”

Bree smiled slightly but a small frown still creased her brow,

“Mama, I don’t want to … you and Jamie … I don’t want to intrude. I just wanted to warn you and make sure you’re safe and I’ve done that. If you think I should go…”

Claire felt guilt stab at her. That she had left Brianna with any doubt about just how much Jamie had loved her, had wanted her, right from the start was a terrible oversight on her part and one that she intended to fix immediately.

“Bree, you’re our child. You are my child! Of course I don’t want you to go and Jamie … Jamie will be delighted to meet you. I have told him so much about you, he wanted to know everything!”

“He did?”

This time the relief in her voice was so obvious

“Of course he did and now you are here. This is your place as much as it is mine, Brianna.”

Claire stroked a thumb over her daughter’s high left cheekbone and cupped her cheek gently.

“Welcome home, baby.”


	8. Enough.

Jamie arrived at Lallybroch at around midnight after four weeks away, saddle sore, dirty and unshaven. He settled Blane in the stables, brushed him down and offered him a couple of handfuls of oats before shutting the stall door and turning his attention to himself.   
He didn’t have a razor handy so the stubble on his jaw would have to stay until morning but he was sure he could probably make a half-way decent job of cleaning himself up a bit before going inside to see Claire. It was not that he thought she would mind the road-dirt, but he wanted to try to look the best he could for her.  
The bucket of water beside the door looked new enough, likely ready to freshen the drinking trough come morning, and after plucking a few strands of hay out of it, Jamie decided it would do nicely.  
He groaned in pleasure as he stripped off the damp jacket and sweaty shirt that he had worn for the last forty-eight hours and plunged his arms into the freezing water.  
“Ah dhia!”  
His teeth began to chatter but without hesitation, he splashed handfuls over his back and chest, washing his armpits with a series of small squeaks as the water trickled down his ribs.  
He rubbed his hands together roughly; dislodging most of the grime picked up along the road, and finally splashed his face and rubbed it vigorously with the cleanest patch of shirt he could find.   
He dug through his bag and came up with a halfway decent linen shirt that was only a little musty and tugged it over his head before running his fingers through his hair and carefully dislodging most of the knots. He had managed to lose his ribbon somewhere on the journey so left his hair loose around his shoulders, curling slightly as it dried.   
Preparations complete, Jamie draped his jacket over his arm and made his way to the house. The dogs greeted him with quiet excitement and although the house was dark, Jamie moved with practiced ease, dodging the familiar furniture and creaking stares without thought, his mind entirely focussed on seeing his wife.  
The laird’s chamber door was slightly open and he eased it shut with a gentle thump, the solid wood settling into place silently behind him. He lit a couple of candles, striking the flint successfully on the first try, and the room became illuminated in soft, yellow light.   
Claire was asleep in the armchair beside the window, her most recent failed attempt at knitting the baby a shawl crumpled across her lap and a plate of cheese and walnuts, her latest craving, mostly untouched on the table beside her.   
Jamie smiled and crossed the room, dropping to a crouch beside her. He hated to wake her but knew that she would be cross come morning if he did not announce himself.  
“Mo graidh? Tis me. I’m home Sassenach.”  
Her eyes fluttered and for a moment her gaze was unfocused but then their eyes met and she sat upright, throwing her arms around his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his cheek before burying her face in his neck.  
“I’ve missed you so much.”  
“I’ve missed you too.”  
They stayed that way for perhaps a full minute before Claire pulled back and cupped his face in her hands  
“Jamie, I have to tell you something, something wonderful but well… it’s a little shocking so …”  
“Whatever it is Sassenach, can it wait until morning? I’m bone tired …”  
Jamie yawned reflexively, his jaw cracking with the force of it.  
“Well, no I don’t think it should wait.”  
Claire’s eyes were sparkling in the candle light, almost feverish with glee and Jamie nodded with a rueful smile   
“Alright, what is it then?”  
“Jamie … Brianna is here.”  
“What? How?”  
Jamie’s jaw slackened with shock and Claire laughed despite herself  
“She came through the stones to warn us about a fire that happened … that will happen, I mean, in America and apparently we’re in it but that’s years away yet and …”  
“Our Brianna? Our daughter? Is here in this very house?”  
Jamie shook his head to clear the buzzing that filled his ears and tried to slow his pounding heart. He had a horrible feeling that he was about to either faint or vomit.   
“Yes. She’s asleep in Ian’s room, Ian is in with Michael.”  
Claire beamed at him and Jamie nodded as if this was the most natural information in the world but his fingers were trembling fiercely. Claire caught hold of his hand and squeezed.  
“You’ll meet her in the morning.”  
Jamie nodded again. He had so many questions but none of them seemed to form coherently enough to ask and really, what did the answers matter? All that mattered was that his daughter was here.   
“Can I see her now? I dinna mean to wake her but … I would verra much like to see her.”  
Jamie licked his lips and Claire realised with a shock that he was afraid.   
“Of course you can. Are you alright?”  
She held out her hand and Jamie helped her to her feet   
“Och aye … tis only that, well I didna expect to ever … it was enough to ken that she was but now … to have the chance to ken that she is …”  
Jamie’s chest swelled with a deep breath. In his eyes Claire could see his hope, his fear and something else, something deeper shining back at her from the sapphire depths. For a moment Claire did not recognise it, but then she saw it clearly, it was the look of a parent contemplating the enormity of their child, of the new life they had produced and the wonder of creation.   
“I know. I didn’t think I would ever …”  
Claire bit the words off. She had not allowed herself to say that she feared she would never see her daughter again. It was a thought too painful to articulate and too raw to dwell on privately.   
“But she is here and you should see her, Jamie.”  
Jamie nodded and took hold of Claire’s hand, following as she led the way down the hall, a candle held out before her like a beacon.   
Claire entered Ian’s room without hesitation but Jamie lingered a moment. His heart was beating so loudly he was sure it would wake the lass and if it did, if she woke and saw him, would she recoil? Would she want anything to do with him at all? Fear once again coiled around his hear and Jamie shuddered.  
“Jamie?”  
Claire stepped back into the hall and he shook his head wordlessly.  
“What if I’m no’ enough Claire? She has come so far and risked so much.”  
Claire placed her hands on his shoulders, warm and solid through the fabric of his shirt, gripping him hard enough to still his tremors and focus his attention on her.  
“Listen to me James Fraser, you have always been and you will always be enough. You are ours and we are yours and the rest we will figure out.”  
“She’s a woman grown though, aye? I dinna ken what she’ll need of me.”  
“You. Just as you are. That’s all anyone can ever need of another person really.”  
Jamie swallowed but nodded his head in acceptance of the truth of her words and allowed Claire to take his hand once again and gently lead him into the small room.   
The candle light threw shadows up the wall, making the room seem deeper than it truly was. Brianna was curled on her side, the same position Claire favoured in sleep, softly muffled snores coming from beneath a veil of tussled russet curls, her hand curled delicately beside her chin. Claire gently moved the red hair back from her face and Jamie whimpered beside her. It was a very small sound, almost lost in the quiet of the room.  
He slowly sank to a crouch, his eyes fixed on his daughter with the sort of devotion Claire imagined a antique dealer might have when gazing upon a fabled gem. Something precious and almost mythical which they had scarcely dared believe existed but was now right before them and every bit as glorious as they had ever dared to hope.  
He reached out and ever so gently touched a red curl beside her hand and a single tear slid down the side of his nose, skirting his lips as he whispered  
“Mo maise, mo nighean ruaidh. Brianna.”  
His voice rose the hairs on Claire’s arms, the longing and love contained within the three syllables of their daughters name as it fell from his lips was almost too much to bear.  
Jamie stood suddenly and caught Claire’s wrist in his hand, towing her from the room without uttering a word. He made it perhaps ten feet before turning to her and pressing his forehead to hers, his eyes closed and mouth pressed into a grim line to prevent his lip quivering.  
“Thank ye, Claire. Thank ye for my daughter.”  
Claire didn’t have time to respond before he kissed her, a gentle kiss at first, almost chaste, but as was so often the case between them, a tiny flame grew into an inferno and they broke apart, lips bruised and breathless.  
“We should try and get some sleep.”  
“Aye, though I dinna ken that I will manage to do so.”  
Jamie smiled and Claire noticed the trembling had returned to his fingers.  
“You will and in the morning you will meet your daughter and you will be astounded by what a wonderful person you created.”  
She smiled, hugging him as tightly as she could around the swell of her pregnancy.  
“We created.”  
Jamie corrected softly, resting his cheek atop his wife’s head.  
“Loving me may not have always been a bed of roses for ye, Sassenach, but my God, if ever anyone should need proof of the wisdom of it, there it is. She is worth everything.”  
“She is.”  
Claire smiled and together, they made their way back to bed, to await everything the morning would bring.


	9. Simple.

Jamie’s eyes fluttered open again before the sun was fully risen. Pale pink light was filtering through the windows, casting a faint rosy glow across the room and casting squat shadows.   
For a moment, his mind was blank, memory lost in the foggy space between sleep and waking and then it all rushed back. 

Brianna. 

His daughter! Ah Dhia!

He sat up, careful not to wake Claire, and got out of bed, crossing to the window and easing it open. He needed air and drank huge gulps of it as quietly as he could whilst waiting for his heart to slow back to its regular rhythm. 

Brianna. 

Jamie smiled, laughed and then realised he was about to cry and closed his eyes tightly, forcing the emotion back. He would not meet his daughter with red-rimmed eyes and a wobbly chin. God! The thought alone made his stomach knot with shame.  
As if eager to make its presence felt more keenly, Jamie’s stomach rumbled loudly and he realised with a vague sense of surprise that he was ravenous. Not surprising considering it had been nearly eighteen hours since he last ate. He decided to shave before eating. The stubble on his cheeks was itchy but the moment he was done and suitably fresh faced, Jamie tugged his breeks on, not bothering with a shirt or stockings and barefooted, made his way down to the kitchen, casting a lingering look at the door behind which Brianna was still asleep before descending the stairs. 

There were scones in the breadbox that Jenny, as their mother before them, kept stocked free for whoever was hungry to rummage through and help themselves. Jamie helped himself to a generous dollop of jam and then another for good measure and set about the scone, using his right palm as a plate.   
As he lifted the last morsel to his mouth, a blob of jam fell from the crudely broken scone and slid down his forearm. Without thinking, Jamie lifted his arm and craned his neck, trying to lick the smear of strawberry from his elbow.

“Oh!”

His head snapped up and his eyes widened in shock. Brianna stood in the doorway, a chamber pot held out before her like a bizarre offering, her own face a mirror of his and her cheeks rapidly reddening, just as Jamie’s were. She was wearing Claire’s dressing gown, a rich blue that contrasted beautifully with her red hair and Jamie could scarcely believe how incredibly beautiful their child was. Despite seeing her the night before, looking at her now, poised and elegant as her mother, Jamie found himself at a loss for words.

“I’m sorry … I was just trying to get outside …”

The lass looked down at the pot in her hands and her face flamed a truly magnificent shade of crimson. Jamie was recovering his composure quickly and he smiled, hoping it looked welcoming, encouraging, and fatherly and not the deranged grin of a fool who was just licking his own arm.

“I didna hear you approach, you have a light footstep, lass.”

She gawped at him as if he had spoken a completely different language.  
“What?”

Jamie opened his mouth to say something but she cut across him. 

“Are you my … I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but are you Jamie?”  
*

Time seemed to slow down for Bree in the second between the question leaving her lips and Jamie … her father … answering her.  
“Aye, and you are Brianna.”

The way he said her name was strange and not at all like anyone else had pronounced it. Jenny and Ian had been careful to say it exactly as Mama had when they had been introduced but Jamie said it with a completely different inflection. It was as if the word meant something more to him than just being her name, he spoke with a sort of reverence that made her feel at once incredibly self-conscious but also very happy. 

“I am.”  
She stood awkwardly for a moment. Neither of them seemed to know what to say and then Jamie, stepped forward and held out his hand.

“Can I take that for ye?”  
Bree looked down and remembered afresh that she was holding a pot of pee and wanted nothing more than the ground to swallow her whole. 

“No, it’s fine. I … Oh God. Okay I’m going to get rid of this … if that’s alright?”  
She stammered and hurried to the kitchen door and out into the courtyard before he could answer. Around the side of the house, Bree set the pot down, closed her eyes and leant back against the sturdy stone and took three very long, very deep breaths. Once she had let the last one go, she opened her eyes and very quietly, but distinctly said

“Fuck.”

That said, she felt immediately slightly better. She knew he would be waiting for her and she knew, instinctively knew, that he would be kind and patient and he wouldn’t be annoyed that she had just run out on him, babbling like a crazy person. He had that air about him, gentle despite his size and God! He was huge! Mama had made him sound like a giant and he wasn’t that but he wasn’t far from it either. Bree had noticed the size of his hands and the breadth of his shoulders immediately, but when he had noticed her and drawn himself up to his full height … she snorted. Well she was six foot tall herself, he was hardly likely to be a small man, was he? 

And they looked so similar too! Everyone had said it. Mama of course, Jenny and Ian and all of her cousins had made some exclamation to that effect but seeing it for herself had been a bit of a shock because they truly were startlingly alike.

Jamie. James. Father. Certainly not Daddy. Never that.

Bree shook her head. She didn’t know what to call him at all. ‘Jamie’ felt a little rude, a sort of improper use of the affectionate pet-name his family and friends called him. ‘James’ sounded too stern and ‘Father’ was painfully formal and perhaps even more improper because despite what Mama thought, there was a chance that he didn’t actually want that relationship with her at all.   
Bree wished fervently that her mother or Jenny, anyone really, would get up and come and save them both from the clumsiness of the encounter. She knew she should go back in; it wasn’t fair to just leave him stood there in the kitchen. She smoothed her hair and then lifted her chin and made her way back to the kitchen.  
*

Jamie watched his daughter hurry past the window, her gaze rigidly on the garden path in front of her. The moment she was out of sight, Jamie slapped his forehead with the palm of his left hand and closed his eyes, making a noise that was half-way between a moan and a laugh. The poor thing! She had just been trying to go quietly about her business and instead stumbled upon her father, half-naked and licking jam from his arm like a dim-witted child. 

His back! Jamie didn’t think she had seen it but she surely would if he didn’t dress himself properly before she returned. He barrelled from the kitchen and took the stairs three at a time, snatching a clean, white shirt from his dresser before sprinting back down the stairs, tugging it over his head as he went.   
He entered the kitchen cautiously in case she should have already come back and was relieved to find it empty. What would Claire do? Tea. He should make a pot of tea, it would give him something to do with his hands if nothing else.

He crouched by the stove, packing in wood carefully to make sure it stacked evenly and as he worked, calm began to descend. The familiar task was gratifyingly soothing to his nerves and as he struck the flint over the little pinch of kindling fluff, Jamie felt the last of the tension leave his shoulders and heard the back door ease open.  
*

Bree had paused by the window watching him work on the stove and as she watched him, her heartbeat slowed and she felt a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth. He had put a shirt on and was building a small fire, most likely for tea judging by the kettle on the table. Whilst she wasn’t exactly used to seeing people stoke fires just to make a cup of tea or coffee, it was the sort of domestic chore that was familiar enough to normalise most situations and if she helped, it would give her something to do with her hands if nothing else. 

“Hi, sorry about that.”

“No bother.”

Bree noticed that when he smiled at her over his shoulder, the smile reached all the way to his eyes and it relaxed her slightly more.

“Would you like me to fill the kettle?”

“If ye would, aye. That would be a help.”

Bree nodded and lifted the heavy black iron, carrying it over to the sink where Jenny kept buckets of water from the well overnight ready for the morning. She filled it halfway and carried it back toward Jamie who had finished with the fire and was now standing again. 

As he took it from her, their hands brushed and Bree was shocked by how warm he was despite the slight chill in the kitchen. He was as warm as she was.   
Jamie gave her another one of those eye-smiles and Bree found herself returning it without even thinking. 

“This is strange, is it no?”  
Jamie gestured for her to sit at the table and Bree did so, picking up a small saltshaker and rolling it between her palms, absently.

“Yeah. I mean, it is strange for me but it must be for you too. I hope you don’t mind me being here, this is your home and I …”  
Bree trailed off shrugging 

“Whatever is mine is also yours, Brianna. As to ye being here, no I dinna mind at all. Quite the opposite. I am truly glad to meet you.”

Bree brushed her hair behind her ear and smiled shyly  
“Thank you. I … ah … I’m really sorry but I don’t … I don’t know what I should call you?” 

He seemed to consider this for a moment, his brows drawing in ever so slightly and his fingers drummed once upon the table, something Bree herself did when thinking she realised with a small start.

“Weel, ye may call me ‘Jamie’ if ye wish, most people do but if you would like, and if it wouldna be too presumptuous of me, maybe ye could call me ‘Da’.”

“Da? Is that Gaelic for father?”  
Bree asked and saw his chest swell and his lip quiver ever so slightly as he said

“No lass, it’s only simple.”  
*

Jamie held his breath as Brianna considered the options he had given. Her hands were gathered neatly around the saltcellar and Jamie desperately wanted to reach out and fold his fingers around hers. To try and convey through his touch everything that he felt but he forced himself to remain still, he didn’t want to frighten her or force anything upon her. 

“Da? Is that Gaelic for father?”

Jamie swallowed the lump which bobbed in his throat and tried to control the tremble of his lower lip.  
“No lass, it’s only simple.”

“Da.”  
She repeated the word as if testing it and then smiled brightly at him and to Jamie it was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, the light of it warming him from the inside out.

“I don’t know how I pictured meeting you but it wasn’t like this. It’s fine though, just different.”  
She shrugged again and Jamie grinned despite himself

“Aye, I must have imagined it a thousand score times and maybe more over the years, but I was never looking such a dolt as that in my dreams.”

Bree nodded, eager to join in with his joke  
“I wasn’t expecting to be carrying my pee a chamber pot.”

Their eyes met across the table, the last of the tension left them, and suddenly they were both laughing. 

“I’m sorry, Brianna. Truly for the first impression ye had of me and for scarin’ ye half-to death.”

Jamie reached his hand across the table in invitation and Bree placed her own hand over his as if it were the most natural thing in the world and really in a way, it was.

“Don’t be. It was fine. Mama will think it’s hilarious!”

“Och! Aye no doubt she will.”  
Jamie nodded in agreement and squeezed her fingers.

“I daresay everyone has been commenting on how similar ye and I look, and we do. But I would like to tell ye also that you have so much of your mother about ye. I often … over the years I often thought about you and what ye might be doing and I knew ye would be beautiful and canny but I never could have imagined just how perfect ye truly are, Brianna.”  
Jamie watched the tips of his daughters ears glow pink with pleasure at the compliment and was glad to have made her feel so. 

“Thank you … Da.”  
Bree squeezed his fingers back, and just like that, everything was simple.


	10. The Sound of Family

I came downstairs and two sounds, both incredibly dear to my heart, greeted me. For a moment, hearing them intermingle together was overwhelming and I placed my hand on the wall beside the banister to steady myself. Jamie and Bree were laughing, together. Brianna’s high, sweet laugh wound around the sound of Jamie’s deep, rich chuckle and they rose as one to float out of the kitchen door and into the house beyond.

All of my concerns as I hastily dressed finding Jamie missing from the bed beside me, and then Brianna gone from Ian’s room evaporated and I closed my eyes letting the noise soothe my soul.

Jamie’s voice, low and gentle, spoke over the laughter and Bree’s, eager and agreeable, answered him.

I had hoped, prayed in fact, that they would be able to reach each other, that Brianna would not reject her father out of a misplaced sense of loyalty or solidarity to the memory of her daddy. She was so very like Jamie, so fiercely loyal and true to the people she loved … enough that she would risk her life to try and warn me about a fire and enough that she had forgiven my leaving her behind in the twentieth century.

And Jamie, my Jamie, I had worried that he would not understand our daughter, a child born out of her rightful time, carried in my womb not only for nine months but across two centuries to be birthed into a world her father would never understand. I had worried that Jamie would be confused by her accent and the proud lift of her chin, startled by her willingness to speak her mind and her demand for respect from all men, including her own father.

Another peal of laughter from the kitchen and I realised how greatly I had underestimated them both.

Palms sweating, I lifted my own chin and made my way toward them, knocking tentatively on the door before nudging it open.

The sight of them stole my breath away. Twin pairs of slanted blue eyes turned toward me, broad smiles that lifted their high cheekbones still further and their hair, a thousand shades of red and gold, amber and copper, softly curling and tussled from sleep. It was so much … it was everything …

“Mama, would you like tea? Da put a fresh kettle to boil …”

Bree stood to pour me a drink at the same time as Jamie stood and offered me his seat, his grin one of such pure joy and shocked happiness, a man who is still marvelling at his good fortune.

I sat down and took a deep breath. Compose yourself Beauchamp.

“Da, do you have the cloth? The handle is scorching.”

“Och, sorry a leannan I put it over here …”

My body had started trembling at the easy use of the endearment toward Brianna and my eyes misted over as she accepted the cloth from him but as she turned back to the kettle, Bree flicked her long hair expertly over her shoulder to get it out of the way and said

“Da, you take your tea the same as Mama, right?”

And without warning the flood gates opened.

“Christ! Sassenach, are ye …”

“No! Ignore me, I’m … oh!”

I buried my face in the handkerchief Jamie had thrust into my hand and allowed my body to quake as he massaged small circles across my back.

“You… you’re both … so bloody lovely.”

I sniffed wetly and looked up, mopping my face with the driest part of the hanky and found Brianna looking at me with one eyebrow cocked

“Jeez Mama!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Dinna be, Sassenach. Truth be told ye’ve done us both a favour.”

Jamie kissed my forehead and grinned

“I have?”

“Aye, we both managed to embarrass ourselves fairly swiftly but I think ye may have taken the crown for it.”

“Oh.”

I smiled weakly and then managed a small laugh.

“What happened?”

“Pee and Jam.”

Bree beamed and without fully knowing what we were laughing at, my own joy linked with theirs and we filled the kitchen with the happy sound of family.


	11. Carry Me Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 11 of Sonas/Happiness.  
> Hi everyone, I am so sorry that this has been so long coming. I came to a bit of a cross-road in the story and wasn’t sure how to continue so I left it alone for a little while but now I have found the thread again. In this chapter we first jump forward and then lean backward in time and this is how it will likely continue for a couple of chapters at least and through Brianna’s perspective. 
> 
> I really hope you will enjoy it and thank you all so much for your kindness and your patience.
> 
> Han xxx

My Introduction to My Father and Re-Learning My Mother by Brianna Ellen Randall Fraser Mackenzie

1782

I couldn’t say for sure exactly when I began to feel like a Fraser. Da made me feel as welcome as he could from the very beginning, as did all of the Murray clan, and Mama of course, but my intrinsic willingness to be included did not kick in immediately.

I was, for want of a better word, overwhelmed.

I’d had plenty of time to come to terms with Jamie and the tale of his love for my mother, and her love for him which was, to me anyway, more important. Mama’s love for Jamie Fraser was what rocked my world and threatened to tip everything into a void of self-doubt and bitterness.

Seeing them together though … I understood it. I saw the way she touched his hand as she passed by him and the way his hand lighted on her hip as they walked together. I noticed the way her eyes sought his at the dinner table and the way he smiled at her, a little lift of the corner of his mouth that was warm and certain. In all these ways and more they each said ‘I love you’ perhaps a hundred times a day.

I had never heard Mama say ‘I love you’ to Daddy. Nor had I seen her offer the words in tiny, silent acts of adoration as she did with Jamie. I had seen her write it in birthday cards and on Christmas gift tags though and as a kid, I had thought that was proof enough. I had been wrong and that knowledge had made me fear that I was wrong about the way she loved me too.

Funnily enough it was Jamie who bridged that void too. I saw myself, my existence, through his eyes. I saw how he adored my presence and how he marvelled at various things I did. It was a bit much really, to go from being a beloved daughter to being an flaunted treasure but what made it a pleasure was seeing Mama’s reaction to his joy.

She urged me forward and shared in his happiness in a way that I had never known her to do. Her pride in me was so obvious that I began to worry I would simply never live up to it…

“Bree?”

Roger’s head popped round the study door and Bree jolted in her seat, her fingers skittering across the page smudging half dried dotted ‘I’s and dashes of ‘t’s.

“Ach! Sorry love!”

Roger bit his lip abashedly, noting the streaks of ink, as he made his way in carrying a tray of coffee and gingernut biscuits.

“No problem, what is a dirty page in the face of such service?”

Bree grinned up at him, stretching her hands above her head and rolling her neck from side to side.

“How is the draft coming along?”

“Better. I feel like I’m finally saying what I want to say about them. About how they were together.”

“How they still are!”

Roger grinned and Bree nodded, snorting.

“Yes, though if Da tramps mud in through the house again Mama might kill him. You know how protective she is of the new rug.”

“Aye, but in your Da’s defence he was just trying to catch Mandy before she could carry the wee frog too far into the house and claim it to be a pet.”

Bree laughed and bit into one of the freshly baked biscuits sighing in pleasure.

“Did Aunt Jenny make these?”

“Aye, the main batch was to decorate the cake for Robbie’s birthday, these are the overspills.”

“I can’t believe my baby brother is about to turn sixteen! And take his first voyage too!”

Bree sighed and shook her head. Roger grinned and bent to place a kiss on the top of her hair.

“Ye should see the state of your mother, she’s cried twice today already and your Da hasn’t even brought the trunk down from the loft yet.”

“Poor Mama. I should go and distract her with something.”

“Unless you intend to help her bind the laddie’s hands and feet and bolt the doors and windows of his room to stop him leaving, I doubt you’ll find her easy to distract.”

Bree smiled in a distracted fashion and closed her eyes as Roger’s hands settled on her shoulders massaging lightly, giving herself over to the sensation and relaxing beneath his gentle fingers.

She let the motion loll her and carry her back through the years, across acres of memory to a time that seemed so desperately long ago and yet also so close that she could still feel the press of her brother’s heel against the palm of her hand, flat against their mother’s belly.

They had been sat in the kitchen, mere minutes after she had met their father for the first time, when Claire had gasped and beamed at them both in delight, gripping first Jamie’s hand and then Brianna’s and pressing their palms to her middle.

Bree remembered the awed look upon her father’s face, his eyes wide and almost disbelieving as the baby turned and stretched, pressing fists, feet and bottom against their hands. She had felt almost like an intruder on their moment, the moment that Jamie had never had with her, both parents feeling the proof of their love. She had begun to move her hand away, intending to leave them be, but Jamie had caught her fingers gently within his free hand

“Stay, Brianna. If ye dinna mind doing so.”

“Sure … I mean … If you want me to…”

“Aye, I do.”

“We both do.”

Her Mama had reached out and cupped her cheek so lightly that Bree had to look to make sure she was not imagining the touch. Her mother’s other hand had settled over Jamie’s, resting against her belly, connecting the four of them physically in a pose that was as symbolic of family as any that had ever been known.

Over the weeks that had followed, she and Jamie came to know each other. It made her smile still to think of the first awkward attempts at working side by side, hesitant and overly polite, neither wanting to spoil the sweet bubble of domesticity that had formed around them.

She had been eager to show her knowledge of guns, horses, and woodwork whilst he had been very happy to listen, encourage, and advise where necessary, but always with a studious respect of the newness of their acquaintance.

It had been a loose rock that had finally bridged the formality. She had been stepping out of the creek, barefoot from laying nets for trout, when the stone she stood on rolled out beneath her, turning her ankle sharply.

The joint had swollen instantly, Jamie’s quick thinking to remove her boot had stopped it needing to be cut off later as within minutes it was three times its usual size.

Jamie had carefully taken her foot into his lap and ever so gently turned it this way and that, biting his own lip at Brianna’s pained gasps.

“I dinna think it is broken but we should get ye back to the house, lass.”

Jamie was still hunkered down on his haunches before her, his brows knotted in sympathy and Bree slapped the ground in frustration,

“Yeah, you’re probably right. It really hurts.”

She had felt foolishly embarrassed, as if she was fussing about a little bump.

“Aye, no doubt. Let me get the bags and I’ll carry ye.”

“Oh! No, Da, really. I can walk.”

She had blushed furiously and struggled to stand, only succeeding in putting a fraction of her weight on the foot before crying out in pain and staggering into his waiting arms.

“Nonsense. Ye can barely stand.”

Jamie had smiled, steadying her and retrieving her boot from the ground.

“Bide here a moment, Bree. Can ye balance? Good.”

Bree had done as he said, wobbly slightly, most of her weight on the uninjured foot as she watched him gather the spare nets and poles, moving with that particular grace and elegance that she longed to capture in lines of charcoal and paint but had not yet built the courage to ask.

“Right, wrap ye arm around my neck, mo chridhe.”

“Da, are ye sure you can … I mean … I’m nearly the same size as you!”

Jamie had snorted at that and held his hand out before her face, long fingers spread wide and cocked an eyebrow in friendly challenge. Bree had placed her own hand against his and laughed at the size difference. Yes, she was big, but the startlingly obvious truth was that he was considerably bigger.

“I think I’ll manage, eh? Now, take a hold of me.”

Bree had done as he asked and besides a small grunt of effort as he had boosted her into his arms, her Da had shown no other visible signs of strain.

She had been amazed at the ease with which he carried her, she had known he was strong but even after nearly two miles his breathing wasn’t laboured and his stride was wide and even, careful not to jostle her and she felt safer in his arms than she had ever expected to feel.

Bree had found herself wondering what it might have been like to have been raised by this man, to have been lifted with familiar ease and sheltered by him from her first breath. With her wondering came a sense of absolute certainty that had she grown up with him, Jamie Fraser would have held her and carried her, supported her and tended to her injuries when they occurred with the same natural affection that he displayed now. She would never have had to feel vulnerable or ashamed. 

Normally any such thought caused a stab of guilt over the Daddy she had lost but now, she merely felt a gentle pull of hope for the future, hope that she would come to know her father well enough that the need for imagining would cease and be replaced with more certainties like this one.

They arrived at Lallybroch within half an hour and as they made their way toward the front door, a low, rising scream reached their ears. Before either of them could react, Jenny’s face appeared at the window and she yelled

“Claire’s having the baby!”

*

To be continued ….


	12. Born.

Brianna sat in the kitchen, her foot on the opposite chair, a cold cloth wrapped around her ankle, listening to the sounds of the birthing room upstairs. Her lips had compressed into a thin line, bloodless and pale with the pressure of her clenched jaw. She wished Jamie would come back and let her know what was going on. He had been gone for perhaps five minutes but it felt like twenty and she needed to know! Damn it! She needed to know now!

She began to get up, heedless of the shooting pain such movement caused her, when she heard a familiar footfall in the hallway

“Da? Jamie?”

“Aye, I’m here. What do ye need, mo chridhe?”

He stepped into the kitchen and Bree found that words deserted her. His face was drawn and as pale as her own was, his complexion the colour of aged ash but his eyes were wild, the iris’ seemingly darker than their usual azure shade.

“Do ye need another compress?”

Bree shook her head mutely but finally words came back to her and she managed to choke out

“Mama? Is she …”

“She’s doing well. I wasna allowed in…”

Jamie’s brows came together and Bree could well imagine the strength of will the old midwife must have shown to keep him out but as frustrated as she knew he was, Bree was glad that her Mama had someone as bloody-minded as a Fraser helping her.

“She’ll be OK, right? The baby is early but not so early that it is bad news? I mean …”

Bree shook her head and closed her eyes, aware that she was babbling. If she thought about it too much then she was likely to work herself up to a hysteria. Better to be silent and wait.

“Sorry.”

She opened her eyes and found Jamie looking down at her with a mixture of amusement and something deeper, darker.

“Ye look so like your mother when ye are mastering your emotions. She has the same glass face, everything ye think flashes across it like ripples on the flat surface of a lake.”

“Mama always said I was good at hiding my feelings. She used to say ‘just like your father’ and I always thought she meant Daddy but …”

Bree smiled shyly and shook her head

“I don’t know how she managed to keep such a secret all those years. I don’t think I could do it.”

“Ye’ll be surprised what ye can do for love, a leannan.”

Jamie drew a chair close beside hers and sat down wearily, not touching her but close enough that she could reach for him should she wish to.

“Mama didn’t love Daddy though. Not after you…”

The note of accusation was faint but distinct and Jamie smiled to himself.

“She loved you though. She wanted the verra best of everything for ye and that included available fathers and from what I ken of the man, Frank was a good father.”

Bree licked her lip and nodded. She would not deny Frank but at the same time, she didn’t want to wound Jamie.

“Ye can speak to me of him, if ye wish.”

Jamie cocked his head and viewed the profile of his daughters face. She was still pale but the haunted look that had crossed her face when he entered the room was gradually fading and Jamie was glad of it. There was nothing he could do for Claire, no matter whether he was in the room or not, but for Brianna … for her he could be strong and help her through the coming hours by distracting her from what was happening upstairs.

“Would you like me to? It must be weird not knowing about the man who, you know, raised your child?”

Her voice rose on the last word, lifting it from a statement to a question and Jamie shrugged.

“I ken bits about him, things your mother told me when we were first married and then more when she returned and told me of you. She didna say a huge amount about him mind, but … ah … men are prideful creatures and it maybe she was protecting mine. I would hear whatever ye cared to say Brianna, about him or any other thing for that matter.”

There was another low moan from the floor above, Bree slipped her hand into Jamie’s palm, squeezing hard, and he squeezed back, just as tightly. The noise passed but Brianna found the silence that followed it almost more unbearable than the scream and hurried to fill it.

“Mama worked a lot. She worked all hours and for a lot of the time it was just me and Daddy. We went out to eat rather than cooking, burgers and pizza, stuff that Mama would have called ‘junk food’ but it was nice, sitting just the two of us in a diner. He always made time for me. I don’t meant that Mama didn’t but she was always so busy at the hospital …”

Bree trailed off and looked at Jamie, her eyes wide and guilty

“She is a really great mother, you know?”

“Aye, I know, Brianna. She be to have raised ye so well.”

Bree nodded, relaxing her shoulders and smiling slightly.

“I just don’t want you to think I’m not grateful to her as well as to Daddy … and to you of course. Mama said that you saved us. That she would have stayed with you on Culloden Moor but you made her go.”

Another scream and the sound of hurrying footsteps in the hall, Jamie leapt to his feet and Bree peered around him but there was only the sound of the linen closet door banging shut and then the footsteps went back to the Lairds chamber and that door banged shut too.

Jamie muttered something under his breath and ran a hand tersely through the tumble of his hair before sitting down again

“It was the hardest thing I ever did, sending ye both away, but the alternative …”

Jamie spread his hands across his lap and blew a shaky breath out between his lips.

“Being a father is no’ just about watching a bairn grow, loving them, disciplining them and teaching them about life. It is about being willing to tear your verra soul in two and give them the bigger piece to keep them safe. Ye dinna need to be grateful to me Brianna, for what I did was only right and I would do it again in a heartbeat to see you right.”

Bree opened her mouth to respond but found that there was momentarily nothing else to say. The stress of waiting for news and listening for any tell-tale sign of what might be happening upstairs had made them both speak more boldly, more freely, than they had done before and now father and daughter sat in companionable silence and waited.

There was a sound like furniture being dragged across the floor above, another cry of pain, excited voices of the women gathered in the room above and then the blessedly high-pitched wail of a newborn baby.

Jamie stood, knocking the chair over backwards in his haste. His palms were sweating and he hastily wiped them on his breeks, swallowing against the sudden dryness of his mouth.

“Oh my God. Da, do you hear that?”

Brianna whispered and clasped her hands in front of her chest, her eyes wide, heedless of the tears that had slipped down her cheeks.

Jamie was staring at the ceiling, his jaw working as he offered up silent prayers, his eyes burning with hope and fear as if he could bend fate to his will if he only stared hard enough.

“Jamie!”

Jenny’s voice rang down the hall.

“Go, Da.”

Bree urged and Jamie glanced down, startled, as if he had temporarily forgotten she was there.

“Should I carry you?”

“Later. For now, give Mama this for me.”

Bree caught his hand and pressed a hard kiss to the scarred knuckles, before sitting back and beaming up at him.

“Go!”

Jamie stooped to kiss her forehead and then bounded out of the kitchen, taking the stairs three at a time. His heart was pounding in his chest. He could hear the baby, God be praised for that much but what of Claire, why couldn’t he hear her voice amongst the clamour?

Jenny was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, a bundle of soft yellow blankets in her arms.

“Mo brathair, ye’ve a son.”

Her eyes were red rimmed and she sniffed heavily as she held the little bundle out toward Jamie.

“Claire?”

Jamie asked and Jenny nodded, carefully placing the baby in his father’s arms.

“It was a hard birth but she’s doing well. Dinna go in to her just yet, she’ll be ready presently.”

Jamie looked down and a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob escaped his throat.

The baby was swaddled tightly but Jamie could see wisps of dark curls fighting to escape the confine of his blankets.

“Aye weel, we ken who your Mam is, do we no?”

He ran a finger cautiously down one soft little cheek and pressed a very gentle kiss to his son’s tiny perfect snub of a nose.

“Halo mo mac, welcome to the world.”

Jamie began walking toward the bedroom and Jenny laid a hand on his arm

“Wait a while, let her gather herself for ye, eh?”

“There’s no need of that. Will ye tell Brianna the news? Tell her I will fetch her up presently.”

Jamie smiled softly and made his way into the bedroom, toward his wife.

Claire was propped up in bed, her hair was plastered to her face and neck with sweat and she was white as the pillow covers she reclined on. Jamie felt a lump spring into his throat and swallowed it with no small difficulty. Jenny had said the birth had been hard but now he saw just how hard and realised with a feeling like being punched in the gut, that it must have been a very close call indeed.

“Sorcha? Mo graidhe?”

Her eyes opened and a smile touched the corners of her mouth

“Jamie. Oh Jamie, we did it!”

“You did it, lass. Ye did it and we have a bonnie wee lad, strong and wi’ lungs as good as his mothers.”

“Is Bree here?”

“She will be in a minute.”

Jamie settled himself on the bed, laying their son against Claire’s chest and helping her fold her arms around the baby.

“Don’t … I’ll drop him.”

“I have ye both, dinna fash.”

Jamie murmured softly, keeping his left hand steadily on the baby’s back, his right hand coming up to cup Claire’s cheek and trace the swell of her bottom lip with his thumb.

“I must look a state.”

She laughed weakly but Jamie shook his head

“I have never seen ye look more beautiful. You are radiant, Claire. Utterly radiant.”

Claire kissed the pad of his thumb and closed her eyes. Her breathing was even and regular and when Jamie was sure she was asleep, he stood lifting the baby with him and crossed to the window looking out across Lallybroch, toward the hills and mountains beyond.

Then, just for a minute in the quiet solitude of the Lairds Chamber, with only his infant son and sleeping wife as witnesses, Jamie Fraser allowed himself to go quietly and very thoroughly to pieces, the depth of his love and gratitude spilling down his face and pattering of the soft cloth of his son’s blanket like spring rain.

**Author's Note:**

> “Do bheachd cudromach gu mor rium, piuthar.”* - Your opinion matters greatly to me, sister.
> 
> “Agus agaibh sonas cuisean gu mor rium, brathair.”** - And your happiness matters greatly to me, brother.


End file.
